


Under a Pale Moon

by JaqofSpades



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: F/M, a touch of Norett for Romeo's birthday, guitarist Connor, music teacher Connor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-23 18:42:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9671237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaqofSpades/pseuds/JaqofSpades
Summary: “I know a guy,” Charlie offers, and Nora tries to hide her grimace because her gorgeous young housematealwaysseems to know a guy.   But this is hardly mowing the lawn or cleaning the pool they’re talking about.  This is a soul-deep yearning, dammit.  It needs to be satisfied, and she’s been searching for the right person for months now.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [romeokijai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/romeokijai/gifts).



> For Romeo's birthday in January, and hopefully finished by Valentine's Day. Beautiful art by Romeo, and hopefully this hits the sweet spot for you love. ETA: I have removed the tagging for Charloe since I ... forgot to write Charloe, what with all the delicious Norett smut.

**************************

“I know a guy,” Charlie offers, and Nora tries to hide her grimace because her gorgeous young housemate _always_ seems to know a guy.   But this is hardly mowing the lawn or cleaning the pool they’re talking about.  This is a soul-deep yearning, dammit.  It needs to be satisfied, and she’s been searching for the right person for months now.  So she cocks an eyebrow and waits to be disappointed.

Her father – not the man that had raised her, but her birth father, who’d died when she was five - had been a flamenco guitarist, a famous one.  All she has of him are a handful of fuzzy memories, a collection of scratchy recordings, and an unusual, pale guitar that refuses to sing for her. It sounds strange under her hands, wrong, but she remembers how it can sound, how he made it cry and sob, and needs to find that.  To learn to play it properly.  To _toque_. 

But it turns out, flamenco guitarists aren’t exactly a dime a dozen.  Let alone available to teach her. So if Charlie knows a guy – Nora has to ask.  Even if she is fully expecting to be introduced to another one of the young blonde’s interchangeable collection of drop-dead gorgeous beefcake boys who are helpful for a whole range of things, but best for just one. 

 “What sort of background does he have? Any qualifications you know about?”

Because those are the sort of details her young housemate tends to dismiss – it’s probably the decade and a half between them.  Maybe by the time Charlie is the one knocking on 40, she’ll have figured out they don’t all have to be pretty.  It’s competence Nora is looking for.  Intelligence.  Kindness.   And in this case, a kickass musician. 

“I need specific flamenco skills, not just classical guitar.  Someone who knows what the golpeador is for,” she explains, trying not to be too sharp about it.  “Ideally, someone who has played in a troupe. Old style, if possible.”  He’d probably be older, she knows.  Would almost have to be. But just in case …

“And it’d probably be easier if you, you know, you didn’t … know him.” Because if she has to listen to the usual rundown on his sexual skills, Nora won’t be able to look the poor guy in the eye.

“Ugh, No.  Not like that. Not with Connor!”

Nora blinks as Charlie – magnificent, shameless, completely comfortable with her sexuality Charlie Matheson – screws up her face and shudders with disgust.  She might even be – blushing? 

Charlie catches her astonished gaze and flicks it away with a defiant toss of her long, blonde mane.  Then proceeds to rattle off a list of credentials that Nora can’t ignore.  Dammit.

“After he graduated from Juilliard he won some fellowship to study in Spain.  Classical guitar and flamenco – what do you call 'em? A tocaor? He performed over there too,” Charlie says drily, pre-empting Nora’s question.

Charlie's use of the traditional Spanish title ratchets up Nora's excitement, but it also fuels more questions. “Why haven’t you mentioned him before? How do you know him, anyway?” she demands, hope swelling inside her chest.

“Family friend – I knew him when we were kids, but I haven’t seen him in years.  Bumped into his Dad at my Uncle’s place, and he was all excited about Connor coming back.  It was so cute,” Charlie grins indulgently. “I asked Bass if he’d be teaching and he said yeah, get in touch.”

Charlie’s eyes slip to halfmast, as if she’s pondering a particularly delicious possibility, but then she catches Nora’s curious gaze and reaches for her phone to text over the contact.  “There you go.  Connor Bennett.  He performs pretty regularly but has a couple of nights free.”

Nora is suspicious - she'd seen that sensual little shiver, thank you very much - but he's a tocaor, a trained flamenco guitarists, so she emails him anyway.  He replies almost immediately, outlining his rates, and saying how Charlie had already mentioned her when they met at his gig the other night.

Huh, Nora thinks.  Why the hell wouldn’t she invite me to something like that? and since when is the original rock chick into flamenco? The flash of irritation is overtaken by excitement when his next line tells her he had kept a couple of slots for her, and would she be interested in Tuesday or Thursday nights?

 _Both_ , she types back _.  I’m happy to work hard – this guitar needs me to be able to play it properly_ , she explains, then finds herself spilling the entire story.

Two days and six emails later, she rings him to firm up their first appointment.

“Hola?  Hello.  Connor Bennett speaking.”

His voice is deep and slightly raspy, as if he spent the night singing in a smoky bodega.  It shoots straight to her loins and catapults Nora into panic mode. How can she take lessons from a man with a skinnydipping-on-a-sultry-August-night kind of voice?  Who flows over her synapses like honey and wakes up parts of her body she’d forgotten were asleep? How?

Then sanity asserts itself.  A sensible voice points out that he’s the only qualified teacher she’s encountered so far, and a hopeful one points out that she’s a grown-ass woman and can handle this.  It’s the mean one that convinces her, though. With a voice like that?  He must look like Quasimodo if Charlie isn’t sleeping with him, childhood friend or not.

It’s vaguely reassuring.

Nora reminds herself of that as she drives to his place in the warehouse district.  There’s a giant, pregnant moon hanging overhead, so bright that she forgets to look for a working streetlight to park underneath.  Everything glows in the silvery light, and the city feels safe in a way it rarely does.  Magical even, she thinks, and giggles at her own flight of fancy as she climbs out the car and follows the moonlit path to his door.

She’s juggling her guitar case, one of her father’s tapes, and folder full of music as she knocks on his door, and she’s busy trying to adjust her load when he throws it open and greets her with a wide, white smile.

Oh no.

That smile.  And the huge brown eyes she immediately falls into.

And the curls.  Lord save her from those curls, because she’s a mere breath away from tangling her fingers in them and …

“Hi.  I’m Connor.”

Quasimodo he’s not, her brain shrills, panicking.  This is the guy she’s been sharing the details of her life with.  Organised to spend every Thursday night for the next six weeks with.  Shit.

“Nora,” she squawks.  “Clayton.”

They stare at each other for a long moment, and her knees threaten to give out as those dark eyes drink her in, a long moment of pure sensual admiration.  Then he starts, and holds the door wide.

“Sorry.  Glorious night out.  Look at that moon.  Come in.”

You weren’t looking at the moon, she wants to say, but she turns to salute its beauty one last time instead.  She can feel her face overcome by a dreamy, moonchild smile, and tries to fight it off by sneaking a glance at her new music teacher instead.  But his smile is a mirror of hers, dazzled and reverent, and no, oh no.  She can’t have another dreamer in her life.

They sigh together as they turn back to step inside the warehouse, Nora’s every nerve firing.  I’ve waited so long for this, and he’s so beautiful, and oh God, the moon, she thinks, and when she takes one last, frantic glance … it winks at her.  She could swear it.

She’s doomed.

*

She can already play, of course.  Just not on this guitar, the cool surface of the golpe plate mocking her for all the things she doesn’t know.

“This is your heart,” he says, rapping his knuckles on the plate.  “You have the rhythm, you simply need to keep it.  Da-dum.  Da-dum.”

She flicks her wrist the way he did, and merely makes a thump.  “How –“ she leans forward over her guitar, better to watch the flick of his wrist.  Watches his eyes drop into her cleavage, and whip away, the rhythm suddenly faster.  Fingernails flicking over the strings, a flurry of sound rising up like scattering birds.

They stare at each other for a long moment of _this, this is happening,_ until he forces his attention to her fingers, strangling the narrow neck of the guitar.

“Ah – loosen up there. You’ll need fluidity on the chord changes, firm but light or she’ll screech at you,” he says, the first hoarse, choked words giving way to a fondness that makes Nora’s heart skip.  She hadn’t thought to infect him with her complicated relationship with this guitar, but she has no doubt now.  It’s as alive for him as it is for her, and maybe that’s all this is, a strange, shared wavelength made up of a common goal and an odd devotion to an inanimate object.

Nora takes a deep breath and forces herself to relax, settling back onto the sofa, her left hand stroking across the neck as her right experiments with using the golpe plate.  She taps out a rhythm, less for the sound of it and more for the motion, trying her knuckles, then the flat of her hand, an extended slide versus the distinct flick of the wrist. Dull thuds become sharp percussive notes; a meandering rhythm becomes the quick tap of shoes and then the slow, steady thud of her heart. 

“That’s it.  Nice.  Now build it in with a gentle strum.  Da, da, **dah** ,” he explains, demonstrating the blend of strings and percussion.  “In D, then G – da, dah, **dah**.”

And yes, it’s a seductive thing, this common purpose, the shared triumph as her stumbling efforts give way to something that starts to sound like music.  Nora realises with a gasp that she actually knows the tune they’re playing, the rhythm and the chords revealing the anonymous music as a sweet little Sevillana that her Dad used to hum at bedtime.   She can’t hide her smile of pure delight, or the tears that well in her eyes.

He thrusts his guitar aside immediately, hovering overhead.  “Nora – what is it? I’m so sorry.  Are you okay?”

She swipes at her eyes with her free hand and cools her hot face by pressing her forehead down onto the cool wood of her guitar.  “Fine,” she mumbles. “Just haven’t heard that song since I was little.  Didn’t even recognise it at first.  You really are a miracle worker.”

“Nah.  You already know how to do this.  Just need a little help remembering,” he says, and when she looks up to thank him, he’s so close her entire body throbs with awareness. 

Just the music, she reminds herself.  Or maybe the moon. 

(Not his hands, stroking over the strings as if they were the delicate skin of her belly, or his voice, making her shivery with need since the first syllable he spoke to her.  And certainly not anything as earthy as the ripple of muscle across surprisingly broad shoulders when he stretched, or the tight curve of his ass as he crouched to correct her fingering.)

Just another of Charlie’s pretty boys, if a tad more talented than most.  Not even in her ballpark, let alone her game. She’s got at least a decade on him, Nora grasps desperately.  It's not as if he'd be interest in her anyway.

“That’s probably enough for tonight,” he says roughly, and her attempt at self-delusion crumbles.  He’s trying to be professional but his voice is unsteady as hers, and his eyes keep dropping to her lips.  She wets them unconsciously, then is wracked by guilt as he groans aloud.

“I’m not …” trying to tease, she wants to say.  But that would be an admission, and it might break them both.  She needs, she needs …

A teacher.  A mentor.  Connor Bennett, tocaor.

… “sure if I can manage next Thursday.  Maybe the one after that?” she asks.

He looks disappointed, but tries to smile.  “Of course.  When you’re ready.  Make sure you practice those golpes, though. From the wrist.”

He walks her to the door, then watches her leave.  She thinks he’s gone when his door shoots open once more, and Connor sticks his head out.  “Call me if you change your mind.  I won’t put anyone else in your slot.”

Good, she thinks viciously, then remembers to wave and smile.  Thank him, all the while ignoring the clamour of _this is not a good idea_ and _he’s mine_ and _please, please, please_.

She lasts three days before she calls.


	2. Chapter 2

The next time they meet, there’s no moon. Nora eyes the inky blackness with satisfaction, and parks underneath the brightest streetlight.  She likes the kid, sure, but everything else – maybe that old movie had something right after all.  She’d been moonstruck. 

Only difference is, there’s no happy ending waiting for her and beautiful Connor Bennett, Nora sighs.  She’s older than him, and his student.  Here to learn to play the guitar she inherited from her father - it was _important_ to her.  All she cared about. 

 _Yeah, sure,_ a traitorous voice giggles, vastly amused by her stubbornness.

Connor opens the door, and she has to watch his face transform as he drinks her in – it’s like the sun coming up, his smile, dragging her own forth before they’ve even said a word, eyes dancing at the simple pleasure of seeing her, his entire body vibrating with pleased energy. 

Teacher, she reminds herself.  He’s a just a good teacher, happy to see his student.

“Hello,” she manages to croak, and Jesus – is that her voice? She doesn’t sound like a student.  She sounds like a woman expecting to be pressed up against this door and kissed senseless.  Dragged inside and bent over that damn couch.   Pulled behind that screen into his bedroom and taught to sing.

“Nora,” he says, voice caressing the sharp syllables until they sound exquisite.  “You look – different.”

Because she’d come straight from work, and yes, maybe she was hoping her no-nonsense lawyer outfit would help.  But he likes the shoes, she can tell.  And when she takes off her jacket … the linen shift is high at the neck and ends exactly on her knee, but somehow manages to make love to her ass on the way through. 

“I was in court all day,” she offers.  “It was this or be late.”

“This,” he murmurs.  “Definitely this,” and – is that a growl in his voice?

Her knees tremble a little, so she hefts her guitar and tries not to look at him as she moves past, walking into his studio.  The lights are low, the couch and his stool bathed in a yellow glow from a pair of lamps.  Memory tugs at her until she realises exactly what it looks like.  An empty stage, waiting for a guitarist to walk into the ring of light, settle onto the stool and play the entrada.

The measured click of her heels on his floorboards is suddenly too slow as the beat makes itself known in her blood.  She can hear the syncopation, and a wail, rising.  Her heartbeat deafens her, for a moment, the certainty of it pounding in her ears.  Tonight.  Magic was going to happen here tonight.  

_Yeah, you’re gonna play guitar.  It’s all you care about, remember?_

Nora steels herself against the taunt and settles herself on the couch.  Connor is tuning his guitar, and she busies herself doing the same.  Practices her golpes, the beat easier to find than it has ever been.  Strums a little, works on the combination of the two.

“Nice work.  Shall we dance?”

They return to the song they’d been working on a fortnight previous, the lullaby her father had sung when she was tiny.  Snatches of words start to come back as they explore the melody, her memory supplying them in her father’s throaty rumble.  Every time her fingers stumble, they dissolve again, and Nora finds herself fighting back tears.  Frustration, she tells herself.  She just needs to focus.

His gaze is hot on her face when she looks up, and concern in his eyes slays her.  A man so beautiful has no right to be kind as well, she thinks grumpily.  He needs to stop.

 “Nora? Are you okay?”

“Fine,” she snaps, then immediately feels bad.  “Sorry.  Annoyed at myself.  Can we try again?”

They do, and again.  Then he moves next to her on the couch to demonstrate an alternate picking sequence, and mere proximity steals her breath. 

“Uh, sorry.  Um –“ she shifts forward on the couch, putting a bit of space between them while supposedly adjusting her posture.  Her fingers feel as thick as sausages as she plucks at the strings, the sounds dull where at least some should be sharp.  Just like her brain, she sighs.  She’s not a teenager.  She refuses to have her focus stolen by some kid who was probably wasn’t even born when she was first learning to play guitar.  Concentrate!

Nora forces herself listen to sounds she’s making and feel the wood breathing under her fingertips.  To take the guidance he’s offering, and hear only the critique, not the sensual pitch of his voice.  To watch his hands and appreciate their artistry, without once thinking about how they might make her feel.

It’s a triumph of will over want, and it works beautifully, the fingering arriving somewhere between her third and fourth attempts at the song, the golpes falling into place underneath it, a beating heart. 

Nora wants to throw her arms in the air, she’s so giddy with triumph.  Instead, she satisfies herself with a little shimmy in her seat, gripping tight to her guitar.  Connor reaches around to offer her a hug of congratulations, and she leans into him, crowing. “I did it!  I actually did it!”

“Damn right you did.  Knew you could,” he vows, and their eyes lock and hold. 

He wants to kiss her right now, Nora knows.  She wants nothing more.  Needs it.  Nearly takes it as her due, his happiness for her and that intensity and the way he’ll taste in her mouth and pluck at her with those fingers and make her …

_So is it still the moon?_

“Can we try it again? See if I can do it straight through?” she croaks, her entire body mourning the sudden loss of his heat as he moves to grab his guitar again, their bodies no longer in contact.

“Good plan!” he says, and Nora pretends not see the long, steadying breath he has to take.  Her head is already bent over her strings, watching her fingering, making sure she’s breaking clean to the golpe.  His accompaniment slots in effortlessly, and they play it through again, and then once more.  Then she begs another song to try with him, and this time, he chooses a duet.

He guides her through her own part first, but it’s easier, so much easier now that the technique has claimed her, and by the second run through she has it down, leaving him to focus on the counterpart melody that weaves around her own.  She plays the golpes, and they resound inside the cavity of her body, as hollow and yearning as her guitar. 

She should have taken that kiss.  The moment might never come again, and if she thought she wanted him before …

The melodies rise, twining together, and her breath catches.  Her heartbeat swells in her chest to the point of pain, and she has to breathe, letting it go.  It sinks, then, lower and lower, a pulse throbbing deep in her belly, and – oh God.  She’s so aroused she can feel the delicate tissues of her sex throbbing in time, swollen and so, so wet.  

Nora presses her thighs together involuntarily, the motion sending a jolt of pleasure so profound she has to bite down on her lip.  Connor’s fingers stutter on the strings and she looks up to find his eyes black with arousal.  His gaze is flitting down from her lips to the hands caressing her guitar, to her legs, fidgety beneath it, then back up to her face again.  He knows, she’s sure of it.  He knows she’s dripping wet for him, just like she knows he’ll be rock hard when he sets that guitar aside.

Why is she bothering to fight this?  What part of her doesn’t need him to give her exactly what she’s been craving since the first time she heard him speak? If she just stops kidding herself, he’ll fill every hole she has, teach her and sweet talk her and give her that hard, hard cock exactly where she needs it, over and over again.  Nora gasps as her pussy clenches and floods, then takes a steadying breath and puts down her guitar.

It’s time for him to turn her into an instrument, to be the one to wail and swoon and sing. 

Connor lets the music trail into silence and when he speaks, his usually smooth voice is noticeably hoarse. “Problem?”

“I’m hoping not,” Nora says, venturing a tremulous smile as she pushes herself up from the couch.  He rises to meet her, then blushes under his tan as her eyes drop to the giant bulge in his jeans.

“Sorry.”

Nora takes her time in looking up, but by the time their eyes meet, she’s feeling bold.  “Don’t be,” she purrs, and turns around, presenting him with her back.  “Could you?”

Because the long zip starts at the base of her neck and traverses the length of her spine.  As messages go, it’s crystal clear.  “Unless you think it will take too long. “

His hands are already skimming along her skin by the time he thinks to ask the question.  “What was your alternative?”

“My first thought when I got here tonight.  I wondered what it would look like.”

He nudges the simple linen shift from her shoulders, and groans, distracted, as it falls straight to the ground.  Nora laughs and bends to pick it up, half wishing she could see herself being exactly this shameless in her lingerie and high heels.

“But now, we’ll never know,” she smirks as she folds the dress neatly and bends again to put on top of the jacket she’d taken off earlier.

“Know what?” he mumbles, staring. Nora tries not to grin too widely.

“Nothing, really.  Just – you know.  Me lying back on the couch in that lovely light, and playing my guitar while you …” she blushes, but forges on.  “Play me.”

Connor steps in behind her to pin her against the couch, erection insistent through his jeans.  He reaches around and lets his fingers ghost over her bra-clad breasts, calluses scraping over her nipples.

“With my fingers or – “ he pinches, hard, and her entire back arches in response. “My tongue? Right through those pretty knickers?”

The exaggerated curve of her ass shifts his focus as he palms both globes, lifting and weighing their fullness before sliding his fingers between.  Nora is embarrassed by how drenched she is, thighs coated in what feels like long hours of arousal, but Connor makes a delighted noise as he slicks his fingers back and forth, coating them, bringing them to his mouth.

“Jesus,  Nora.”  His voice actually shakes.

She spins around to undo his belt as quickly as her clumsy fingers will allow, pushing jeans and shorts underneath down towards his knees in one swift motion.  “I need you to be fucking me now.”

And it’s Nora who bends herself over the back of the couch, pinching at her own nipples, writhing in her need for him.  The press, when it comes, is the most delicious thing she’s ever felt.  He slides in slow, then withdraws, then pushes back in, folding over her back as he groans in her ear. “So good.  You feel … I can’t … Nora!”

“Go slow later.  Please,” she begs, pushing back into him in desperation.  “I need you to …”

She doesn’t get to finish her sentence before he pulls out again, then slams home.  Her teeth clang together and her oversensitised skin scrapes over the stubbly fabric of the couch, but her greedy, greedy sex … it rejoices.  Clenches hard around him, then weeps for his loss. Rejoices again.

She’s right on the brink of orgasm when he pulls out completely and drops to his knees behind her.  “Please,” she hears, and sobs her assent as he drags his tongue over her dripping slit, then delves inside, fucking her in sharp stabs as his nose worries at her clit. 

“Connor, I’m going to …”

“mmfmff,” is her only response as he opens his mouth wider, tongue working furiously as she starts to come, slurping up her orgasm with an intensity that leaves her screaming and thrashing as she convulses over his face.

He waits until she’s completely done before he stops, and emerges with the widest grin she’s ever seen on a man’s face.  And Nora is able to notice from her near faint – a purpling, agonised-looking cock. 

“I want you to come inside me,” she blurts, and … they haven’t talked about diseases, or birth control or any of that stuff.  But …

“I’m clean,” he offers hopefully, sliding his cock back and forth over her swollen flesh.  “Are you?” 

“Yes,” she grits out.  “Clean, and on the pill.  Please, Connor.  I need …”

She doesn’t need to say another word, because he’s plunging back inside her, deep, stealing the air from her lungs all over again.  It’s even harder, this time, almost a touch unhinged, and the scream rises from deep in her belly.

“God, yes.  Harder.  So good,” Nora sobs, body tensing again as if it doesn’t know she’s never been able to come twice.  It doesn’t in fact, the tremors he’s creating turning into a vast moment in which every muscle of her body pulls up, then sits suspended, as if waiting for him.  His teeth sink into the back of her neck as he slams home again and again, then stills, erupting in a fountain of wet heat that seems to go on and on.  Timeless, in fact, because she’s coming too, earthquakes and lightning storms and all the choirs of angels singing at once, as they shiver and convulse together.  He collapses over her, and they don't move - can't - until the shocks of pleasure fade into a warm, wet ache.

“We’re gonna make a mess,” Nora says idly, some time later.  He’d folded her in his arms and walked around the couch, settling them back down as their blissed-out bodies pushed them towards sleep.

“Don’t care,” Connor yawns, then slides one eye open to check on their guitars.  Both safe.

“Next time we’ll put them on the stands to be sure,” Nora reassures him, and he turns his face into hers. 

“You mean, next time, when we do that thing?  With your knickers and my tongue?”

“Maybe.  Or there’s always a bed,” Nora smiles sleepily, then drifts off to dream of the moon.

(When she wakes, it’s to the touch of soft, white sheets, and the sound of the guitar.)

_fin_


End file.
